Archive for June, 2008
Monday, June 30th, 2008
Search engine optimized press releases are still relatively new in the field of SEO (during some research I found an article from 2004 claiming they were the new “secret back door to top search engine ranking”), but they are incredibly beneficial to an SEO campaign.
But why?
Some of the most frequently asked questions I get from clients are “Why does my company need to do press releases? How will press releases benefit my SEO campaign?”
Part of the answer is in the anatomy of an optimized press release. A properly optimized press release will include your top keywords as well as links to your website.
Backlinks:
Once the optimized press release is distributed, it gets picked up on various sites and channels including news search engines such as Google news and Yahoo! news. Every time another website picks up the press release, it reproduces the release along with all of your keywords and links. This has the effect of generating widespread backlinks (links back to your site).
These backlinks are one of the factors Google uses for determining a website’s search engine ranking. Google looks at how many backlinks you have, and where they’re coming from, so add in the fact that most of the backlinks are coming from news websites which have very high page ranks, and you have a good amount of quality backlinks that will increase the page rank and link popularity of your website.
Increased Keyword Rankings and Visibility:
News stories on the web are considered more time sensitive than regular web pages, so when your press release is distributed, it will be linked very quickly, giving you early visibility in news sites, news searches and standard search engines. Many news web sites also archive stories which can help to deliver long term link value, rankings and visibility.
In addition, online news search queries are generally much more targeted than standard web searches. In other words, people searching for news related to your industry are more likely to search for the terms that are used in your press release, which gives you a better chance at increasing the ranking of your website for popular and competitive search terms.
Credibility and Increased Traffic:
Last but not least, well written content will always add credibility to your website. The more information you show that you know, the more trustworthy you become. When your press releases start appearing in Google news and Yahoo! news for your keywords, potential customers searching for your product or business will see that you are a credible source of information in your industry and that you can be trusted. Those with Google alerts for your keywords will automatically receive your press release in their inbox, which will generate interest and relevant traffic to your site as well.
Bottom Line:
So bottom line, “Why does my company need to do press releases?” Because search engine optimized press releases are one of the quickest and easiest ways to start generating more backlinks, visibility and traffic for your website, and are a beneficial addition to any SEO campaign, no matter what your industry.
Copyright (c) 2008 Lee Jenkins
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
Getting your target audience to find you is becoming more challenging, which is why adding Press Releases to your online marketing arsenal is of key importance. Learn more about SEO Optimized Press Releases as well as other topics by visiting our blog!
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Monday, June 30th, 2008
Let’s take a minute and talk about search engine marketing. This is where you specifically market your website or blog on a search engine. There are a few different ways that you can do that and the traffic that can come from them is fantastic.
1. You can buy traffic on a search engine, which is known as pay per click advertising. For example, the most popular form of this advertising is Google Adwords. Yahoo Marketing and MSN also have popular programs as do several hundred other pay per click search engine advertisers.
This can be very effective because you can quickly be get on page 1 of a search engine. Taking Google as an example, if you look at the ads across the top of the page and down the right-hand side, those are paid ads. An advertiser is paying for the placement and achieving it by bidding on the various keyword phrases.
This is a technique that needs to be studied before you go off and invest a lot of money. Surprisingly, most advertisers lose more money than they actually take in with pay per click advertising, as so it is important that you understand what you’re trying to achieve with your campaign to help you be profitable with it.
2. You have probably heard of the phrase search engine optimization. Optimizing your website for a search engine is not as difficult as you may think it is.
It certainly does take some understanding of how search engines rank and how to target various keyword phrases. By optimizing a webpage or a blog post for a targeted keyword phrase you stand an excellent chance of ending up on page 1 of certain search engines.
Again using Google as the example all the ads that go down the middle of the page are called organic searches. These websites have earned the right to be there according to Google. This is done through optimizing your website and getting backlinks to it.
3. Another thing you can do is submit your website to search engines and directories. This can be a way to achieve back links and get organic listings for your website as well. There are companies that will do this for you, which automates the whole process and is much quicker than manually trying to send to submit to a search engine directory one at a time.
In summary, these are 3 examples of how search engines marketing can work for your business. Using one or more of these ways can help you generate more traffic for your website or blog.
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
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Thursday, June 19th, 2008
In this second article, we examine some more things to watch out for when you are creating a link building campaign. Hopefully by the end, you will be in a better position to obtain and maintain good quality backlinks that help launch your site up the search engine rankings.
1. Is The Links Page Indexed By The Search Engines?
If a link on pages is not being read by the search engines, then it is not of much use to you. The further the links page is from the home page, the less likely it is to be indexed. If a page has PR, then you know that it has been indexed (by Google at least), although no PR does not mean that the page has not been indexed. You can conduct your own test by typing cache: followed by the url of the page in question. If the page has been crawled, you should see some results.
2. Should You Be Wary Of 3 Way Links?
Many people feel that direct reciprocal linking has limited value these days. One way around this is the idea of 3 way links; where site A links to site B, and site B links to site C. Site C then links back to site A again. One problem with this is that it is harder to control where exactly your link is going to end up. If as a matter of policy you have decided that relevance if of paramount importance, then 3 way linking may not be for you, Or at least, it may be harder to organise.
3. Association With Particular Sites?
Your decision whether to link or not should be a bit easier having read this article (hopefully). You should have some criteria in mind as to what constitutes a site you want to be associated with. If the site in question meets your criteria, then add a link. Equally, if that site does not meet your criteria, then steer clear.
4. How To Keep Track Of Links Back To Me?
This is perhaps the hardest and in some cases the most time consuming part of your link building process. Obtaining links is a painstaking and time consuming process, and you don’t want to give your work away too lightly. To protect your links and the integrity of your sites, you should check that your link partners are keeping to their side of the bargain and keeping your links live. You could do this by maintaining a spreadsheet of all of the links, and checking them one by one. Ouch! I can suggest an easier way to do this which will save you many hours a week though. I will go into that at the end of this article.
5. What Are The Best Links To Have?
There is no definitive answer the this question. Maybe one way to answer this is the links that deliver the most traffic to you. Or perhaps the links that give the best value to your customers. There is no right answer. One way to find good potential partners is to type in a specific keyword into the search engines, and contact some of the sites that come up at the top of the results. These should be good potential partners.
What you have now are some good ideas for a link building strategy that allows you to make good decisions based on sound principles, and now you should be better placed to make those decisions.
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
You can make your link building life an easier by using tools that save you time and money. Link Checking is a breeze when you have the right tool to help you. This tool can also help you find better link partners. You can try some new link building techniques. These are very successful. Techniques that take the pain away from the link building process.
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Monday, June 16th, 2008
Reciprocal linking may not improve your rankings as much as one way links do, but, two way links are still an important element of any linking strategy. At least some of your off page optimisation time should be spent on soliciting reciprocal links
For anyone new to internet marketing, reciprocal linking is an important component of search engine optimisation.
It’s simply a method where you place a link on your site to another webmaster’s site, and they return the compliment by placing a link on their site to yours. Traditionally, that is why you see “links pages” on a lot of web sites. It’s the page where Webmasters place their outbound links to the other sites, usually in return for a link back.
Initially it can be a hard to find partners who are willing to reciprocate links with your site. Its essentially the chicken and the egg problem.
For example, another site that has decent page rank will usually not be interested in trading links with you, because your new site will have zero page rank and therefore not add any juice to their rankings!
So basically you need to have inbound links to attract inbound links!
I therefore tend to concentrate on requesting links from related sites that have a low Page Rank to start off with, usually three or less, until I have at least a page rank of 3 myself.
I leave higher ranking sites alone to begin with until my own pages start to get decent page rank of their own.
So how exactly do you go about finding link exchange partners?
The simplest way is to start with Google. Type in one of your keyword phrases together with the words “add url” or “add link”. The results returned by Google will list sites in your niche that are looking to swap links.
The returned pages will show you what you need to do to get your link on their sites. Usually it’s as easy as adding your site details to the fields on the returned page, and then copying and pasting their hyperlink code to your own links page.
When you publish your own “link” page so that you can display links from other sites, you need to add more that just links to your new page.
I suggest you do the following: Add some relevant content to the page as as well as just links to make the page more attractive to the Search Engines. Don’t call it Links Page, call it “sites of interest” or something similar; Ensure it links directly to your homepage; Split the site links into sections with good Keyword headings and description; Finally, get some inbound links to it!
Why effectively optimise your “links page”?
Well if you do, your “links” page will earn a decent Page Rank, rank well and get traffic. If it does, you will soon have other webmasters contacting you to have their link placed on your links page! Not only that, if your links page gets a decent page rank, you’ll attract higher page rank link partners to exchange with, boosting your rankings further!
Next, do what the sites returned in your Google results are doing. Place an “Add URL” page on your website and make it easy for other webmasters to exchange links with you! Again, add lots of keyword rich text to the page to help it in the rankings so that webmasters find it!
Ensure “Add Url” appears in the page title, page heading and in the body of the page along you’re your keywords. Also, use “Add Url” as the anchor text for the links to the page.
Finding reciprocal linking partners doesn’t have to be hard work, and it can be fruitful, particularly over the longer term. As you find partners and they find you, your inbound links will grow naturally over time.
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
Reciprocal Linking can really boost your search engine rankings. To learn more about strategies that work and techniques to rapidly accelerate the link exchange process, take a look at the Author’s website: www.essentialseotools.seoblog
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Monday, June 16th, 2008
Don’t know what a meta tag is? Don’t worry it won’t affect your search engine rankings! A lot of gurus suggest that you have to be an expert to get high rankings. You simply don’t. Search Engine Optimisation is pretty simple. Once you understand the basic concepts anyone can do it and rank well!
Think about it for a moment.
The aim of all the search engines is to provide fresh, original content to the person looking for it. Once you understand that statement, SEO becomes really easy.
Now you understand what the search engines are looking for, it follows that a web page needs to meet the following criteria to rank well:
- it needs to have original content - the content needs to be clearly defined - the page needs to contain high quality content
What this means to you as an internet marketer or publisher is:
- you need to write your own content - you need to focus key elements of your web page around your keywords - you need to write quality content that people will value and want to share
How well you need to do the above three elements in order to rank well depends on how competitive your targeted keywords are?
The more competitive your keyword phrase is, the bigger the challenge you’ll face to achieve a high ranking for it. If there are only a few sites competing for it, it won’t take too much effort to get ranked on the first page of Google. Well targeted, original content will simply do the job.
But, when the competition increases and you start to compete with thousands if not millions of other pages, you’ll need more than well focused, original content, you’ll need quality as well, and lots and lots of inbound links!
Why? Well lets consider exactly how the search engines measure quality
It’s pretty simple in practice. The search engines count how many sites link to your content. A link from another site is seen as a recommendation. Therefore, the more pages you compete with for your chosen keyword phrase, the more inbound links you need for your pages to rank highly.
Not all recommendations are worth as much as others though. A recommendation from a recognised expert carries a lot more value than from a non-expert! If a web site is seen as an authority site in your niche, and you get a link from it, it will be worth a lot more to your ranking than a link from a new site in an unrelated niche.
SEO is that simple! Gurus and experts often attempt to overly complicate the seo process in order to promote their own services and courses.
Simply place your keywords in your page title, page header and a few times in the content of your article, and then get lots of sites to link to your page.
Keywords and Links equal High Rankings!
The main reason that so many would be marketers fail at SEO, is purely because they want to rank highly overnight for competitive keywords! It simply won’t happen.
Getting lots of free traffic from the search engines requires lots of time, effort and focus.
Apply all three of those, and you’ll succeed at SEO.
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
To learn a lot more about successful Search Engine Optimisation, both on page and off page, visit the Author’s blog. www.essentialseotools.com/seoblog
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Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Do you have the vision of owning your very own business? It’s a lot of peoples dreams to build something they can call their own. But most traditional ways of starting a business limits a majority of people from ever pursuing their dreams. Thanks to the World Wide Web, a successful business is in every persons grasp.
A business on the Internet can be started up and run for a minimum amount of cash and generating increased web site traffic to your business can be practically free.
To get the word out on your new business doesn’t have to cost much. Increased web site traffic can be had for free. These free methods will take your time to implement, but they can be highly effective and the foundation of your marketing efforts.
How great can it be to have increased web site traffic to your site without spending a single cent?
I’m not saying that paid marketing and advertising methods aren’t effective. Many businesses have great success employing these methods like pay per click for increased web site traffic. But, if you are on a limited budget and you probably can’t afford to use paid methods, these free methods will be very effective, so you can continue building your business.
You can immediately employ these methods in your business. Like the paid methods, you need to do it correctly, but you aren’t going to lose any money in the process.
Use these 3 strategies now for increased web site traffic.
1- Participate in forums and discussion boards for increased web site traffic
Forums are an excellent medium to get increased web site traffic. It’s simple in that you ask questions you need answered and answer questions or make comments you have knowledge about. If you are sincere in being there to contribute, this can be a great way to go.
Become a regular contributor to the community and you will become known and respected for what you offer. Forums allow you to leave your signature along with a link back to your site. Leaving links in all your posts will eventually result in increased web site traffic for you.
When you make regular post and genuinely make the effort to contribute, you can develop relationships, contacts and keep up with your chosen subject.
2-Get links by trading with other similar web sites.
To have increased web site traffic, reciprocal linking can be effective. Just be sure you aren’t doing this with direct competitors.
One example of this is if your site happens to sell running shoes, you could hook up with a site that coaches runners. Their links will bring in increased web site traffic that’s very targeted.
This arrangement can be mutually beneficial if both sites are actively working on getting increased web site traffic. This method takes some time and patience, but will work if you persevere.
3- Article marketing for increased web site traffic
This is a tried and true free method that has worked and will continue to work for years to come. The Internet is driven by content. Content is King. You provide great useful content in the form of articles and you will get increased website traffic.
Quality useful articles = increased website traffic because people will look to you for answers. The secret is to make the articles reader friendly, but also keyword rich so you are optimized for the search engines. There are many directories in which you can submit your articles. If your articles are good, then webmasters will take those articles and place them on their website.
They are allowed to do this, but only if they retain what’s called a resource box. This is an area, usually at the end of the article, where you can promote your site by providing an offer and link back to your site.
This viral effect will result in increased web site traffic. A person reads what you say and if they like it they will click on the link to find out what you are about.
Also if you do your job right and pick good keywords, you can get positioned in the search engines and have plenty more web site traffic.
In summary, if you do the work, these methods will bring in increased web site traffic. These strategies must be done consistently to see the results. So post comments in forums, trade links with similar sites and do article marketing for increased web site traffic.
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
Make sure you learn how you can receive increased web site traffic for FREE. Know the #1 problem facing all online businesses today, and how solving it can make you very rich! Also visit my blog for ideas on increased website traffic
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Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
The days of stuffing META tags for great search engine ranking are long gone. If you want a top spot on Google today the thing that matters most is how you link. And you need to do it like a pro.
But don’t worry. Linking is a whole lot easier today than it was a few years ago. Experience has taught us a lot and with the information in this article you won’t need to worry about endless trial and error. We have a simple and repeatable process that anyone can do, as easy as 1, 2, 3.
That said; let’s take a look at the linking strategies that Google will give you the most credit for…
Link Strategy 1: Reap the Most Benefit from Anchor Text
You probably already know that anchor text is the clickable word or words that make up a hyperlink. But what you may not yet fully realize is just how powerful anchor text is. Want to see for yourself? Try a simple experiment…
Go to http://www.Google.com and search for “click here” (no quotes.) Did you get a link for Adobe Acrobat Reader at number 1? Why is that? Check out the page. They have no mention of “click here” anywhere on the page or in the META tags.
So why does it rank number 1 on Google for “click here”? It’s all thanks to anchor text. More specifically, it’s because of the countless pages that have “click here” as anchor text that links to Adobe’s Acrobat Reader download page.
Did you notice how many competing pages there are for “click here” on Google? Almost Two Billion! Anchor text is extremely important. Here are a few rules of thumb to get the most from yours…
A.) Use your three most important keywords for your anchor text. Specifically, your most important word 60% of the time; your second most important keyword 25% and your third keyword 15%. Remember that is for each page you link to (every page should focus on 2 to 3 keywords.)
B.) Use “long tail” keywords when appropriate (3 or more words in the keyword phrase.)
C.) If your anchor text is part of a paragraph, like a signature block, make certain the surrounding text is optimized for the keyword you want or close variations. And make sure that text is varied. You want to have plenty of versions of the surrounding text block so Google doesn’t ding it as duplicate content.
Link Strategy 2: Make Your Target URLs Laser Accurate
URL accuracy, or format consistency, is extremely important. Make certain you use the exact same URL string whenever you request a link. Even though a URL link beginning with “http” or “www” (or both) might resolve to the same webpage, Google sees them as different destinations.
Want to see for yourself? Go back to Google.com and enter “Links: http://” (without quotes) followed by www… any domain name you want. This shows you the inbound links for that specific domain.
OK, easy enough. Jot down the number of links. Now try it again WITHOUT the “www.” And record the number of links. Now try it a third time with the “www” but NOT the http://”. Are you getting different numbers? This is because Google sees them as different link destinations.
Link Strategy 3: Go Beyond Reciprocal Linking
Reciprocal links just aren’t enough any more. Google now discounts the importance of simple link swaps so reciprocal links alone will not do the trick like they used to. But don’t worry, with a little time or money or both, you can have the best links imaginable.
The two fastest and least expensive ways are by submitting your site to directories or paying a link service, but NOT a reciprocal linking service. Let’s start with directories…
But before we do, there are two downsides to links from directories that I need to mention. First, Google has been discounting directory links over the past few months. Second, some directories charge a fee to get listed (for example Yahoo charges $299 per year!)
But don’t despair. Links from directories may not be all they used to, but they still help your SEO efforts. There is a great page I like to visit that has all the most important directories listed, along with links to the site, GRP (Google PageRank rating), cost (if any) and more; http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
You can click on the column headings to sort by any category you want. This makes finding the freebies, or top GPR sites quick and easy. This site also appears to have some sort of paid membership available but I just use the free link above and it does all I need and more.
Important Note: There is a third possible risk that comes from link farms, which are sometimes very similar to certain link services. That risk is having too many inbound links coming from a single IP range (Internet Protocol address.) Google HATES this and will discount all these links, or worse.
As for reciprocal linking services, I recommend you avoid them like the plague. However there is a nice solution called “3 way linking” that still allows you the set it and forget it option. Here’s one service I’ve had great results with…
3WayLinker.com (http://www.3WayLinker.com) does not link sites back to each other reciprocally. Instead it creates a series of one way links that are counted purely as inbound links by Google. Even more it helps eliminate duplicate content in your link text and makes sure all inbound links are from a wide range of IP addresses.
Here’s how it works… Site “A” links to site “B”. Site “B” links to site “C”. Site “C” then links to site “A”. So each is a true one way link. This also gives the system more options regarding which sites form a team. With reciprocal links, if both sites use the same hosting provider, there is a very high chance you will be linked within the same IP range. With three way linking this problem is eliminated.
So to recap,
1.) Get the most out of your anchor text;
2.) Be very consistent with your link URL, and
3.) Do more than just reciprocal linking.
Now go get that top spot you’ve been after!
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
Mike Small is the founder of SEOpartner.com and author of seven successful search engine optimization books.
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Thursday, June 5th, 2008
It’s a vicious circle - to get more web traffic, you have to be listed high in the search results: to be listed in the high search results, you have to get lots of web traffic. Sadly, the days when rich content alone attracted web visitors are no more.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the reason why a website gets a good ranking on web searches. Making a website SEO-based can be anything from legal to borderline illegitimate, depending on what techniques you use.
Some of these optimisation methods include writing keyword-rich web content, articl submission and link exchanging. These were the most practiced SEO techniques until some wise soul came up with the idea that blogging can be a valuable SEO tool. It has become a phenomena since then.
A weblog, better known as a blog, are created for both personal and business purposes. Your blog gives you the freedom to talk about anything you want and it’s quite an enjoyable task that’s worth all the effort. Blog attract loads of traffic and you can have your blog either within ot external to your website.
You decide what the content on your blog should be, and you can put as many links as you like in you blog posts. If it is within your site, you can boost your site’s position in searches by incorporating links. If it is not in your site, you have a priceless way of getting regular one way links.
Reciprocal, or exchanged links, are capable of boosting your site up on the search engines, but one-way links are invaluable for this purpose. Blogging can build traffic in two ways - people will follow these links directly from your blog, and they will make sure that your site figures prominently in searches.
Your blog must be informative and rich in keyword-based content to make a good hit when it first starts off. Having your blog within the site increases its chances of getting hits for keywords. Because blog posts are different from the ordinary article format, it might be harder to put in keywords in your posts, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll breeze through easily.
Another great thing about blogs is that people can tell you exactly what you are doing right, or wrong. If you listen, you will pick up ways of making your site better and more useful. You can also interact with potential customers and build contacts, an essential part of any business.
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
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Thursday, June 5th, 2008
Search engine optimization has changed a lot since over the past decade. Even just a few years ago you could simply load keywords to the point of overflowing and fill META tags with anything even close to what you had on your page to do great on Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista; all the biggies. Not anymore. But while it’s become harder for most people, its easier than ever for people who follow these two simple steps…
Today SEO is about a 75% / 25% split between links and content, with inbound links being the most important thing. Especially on Google. When all is said and done, you can get to the top of Google in just two simple steps. Seriously. I’ve done it hundreds of times and it’s easier than you’d imagine.
Step 1: Develop Great Content
Writing great SEO content is a snap if you follow this simple 5 step formula…
1.) Write naturally as if speaking with a friend. Record yourself actually speaking to a friend about the topic of your Web page and it will all come together automatically.
2.) Limit each page to 2 to 3 keywords or keyword phrases.
3.) Mention each keyword no more than 4 times per page and split the usage somewhat equally between paragraphs. Two mentions of your major keyword in the 1st paragraph is the only real exception. And be sure you mention each toward the end of the page to show overall consistency and topic authenticity.
4.) Try to incorporate the first mention of each keyword into hyperlink anchor text. The link should lead to another page of your own site. (Note: The keyword would then be the clickable text leading to your other page.)
5.) Have between 150 and 250 words of text per keyword. So if you have 3 keywords on one page, you will have about 600 words on that page, in total.
That’s the quick and dirty SEO content writers course. And believe me, it works!
Step 2: Link Like the Pros (Part 1; Strategize)
Linking is a bit more involved. The main thing to remember is that you want as many high quality, topic relevant links as you can get. And you want them all using the same exact URL since Google sees URLs that begin with “http://www” differently than links that begin with just “www”. In other words, even if you have 200 links to your page, if they are split between URL formats, you are not getting full credit for the links.
And forget all that stuff about links to the homepage being “a must.” Of course, getting inbound links to your homepage is great but Google has smartened up. They figure your site overall is probably not that great if nobody bothers linking to your actual content pages. While it’s true that Google ranks pages rather than sites, they do still base each of your page’s worth on its supporting pages.
I won’t bore you with a bunch of techno babble. In short, if you keep this in mind, you’ll always be ahead of the game:
1.) Inbound links should be from pages containing relevant content of a similar nature.
2.) Links to your web pages from outside pages with high Google PageRank (GPR) are most desirable. (Note: GPR is NOT the page’s position on Google. It is a value, from 1 to 10, that Google assigns to all Webpages.)
3.) Links from (not to) a homepage are typically most valuable, unless they have a higher GPR page to link from. Focus on the GPR. If you use software like that mentioned below, it will do all this automatically. If you do it all manually, get the free Google Toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com. GPR is shown for every page (that has any) on the Internet.
4.) Inbound links to your pages should feature your keyword as the anchor text triggering the hyperlink (keyword is the clickable part leading to your page.)
5.) Do NOT use generic text for your link’s surrounding content. Make the sentence as relevant as possible.
6.) Use as many variations of your link’s surrounding content as possible so the search engines don’t view your inbound links as duplicate content.
Step 2: Link Like the Pros (Part 2; Do It)
As far as actually getting great links, avoid the automated script based reciprocal link services. A lot of these services link your pages to “gray barred” pages, which means your site can get kicked off Google as well. And to be honest, reciprocal links are not nearly as valuable to Google as they once were, especially the junk link pages most of these services create.
If you want to “set it and forget it” without the problems mentioned above, you might want to try a service like 3-WayLinks.com (http://www.3-WayLinks.com). Although I’m not a fan of any linking service, this one is the best I’ve come across so far. They set it up so your page links to another, which links to a third, which links to you. There is no direct link type reciprocal beeline leading back to your page and each link is credited as a 1 way inbound link by Google, which is the most valuable type of link.
Of course, natural linking is the way to go whenever possible. Google LOVES links that are part of page content (see the anchor text notes above.) And getting great links like this is easier than ever with the right software so don’t sweat the time or effort. Both are minimal.
The product a lot of SEO pros use (myself included) is SEO Elite, available at http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com. It works great as both a full function link building tool and ranking checker for all major search engines. Even if you don’t need the app, take advantage of the free videos on the site. They explain special linking considerations, like special reserved commands such as “allinanchor” and how to find Google “Authority sites.” You can still benefit from the information, even without the tool.
Big Tip: When approaching other sites for links, try to get your link as anchor text in the actual page content, or a margin. Also do their link that way and explain the benefits and how much Google loves this type of natural content linking.
So there you have it; everything you need to get your pages on top of Google in record time. Best of luck. You’ll do great!
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
Mike Small is a ten year veteran SEO specialist with thousands of top search engine rankings to his credit. He is the author of seven SEO books and founder of SEOpartner.com.
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Thursday, June 5th, 2008
Ranking well on Google takes two things, good content and great links. But it’s not an even split. Because Google assumes only a page with good content would get great inbound links it puts about 70% of the importance for ranking on links and only about 30% on content. That little tidbit alone will put you head and shoulders above all those competitors still messing with META tags and spamming keywords. But if you want a huge advantage over the rest of your competition, keep reading. I’m about to show you how the pros do it and win every time.
Part 1: Perfect Your Anchor Text
So just what is anchor text and why is it important? Anchor text is the clickable word or words that make up the hyperlink. You’ve seen anchor text a million times (the underlined words that are typically blue.) Google figures any words special enough to be used as a guide in a link are extra valuable, which makes anchor text extremely important for you to use properly.
Just how powerful is anchor text? More than most people dream. Try an experiment. Go to Google and search for “click here” (without quotes.) The top match for years has been a page for Adobe Acrobat Reader. So does that Adobe page have “click here” copied 50 times in the text? No. In fact “click here” does not even appear on the page a single time! Does it have “click here” embedded in its META tags. No; again, not even once.
So how can it possibly rank number 1 on Google for a term it never even references? Because of the thousands of Webpages that use “click here” as the anchor text linking to Adobe’s free download of Acrobat Reader.
By the way, did you happen to notice how many pages Adobe beat out for a term they never optimized themselves for? Almost Two Billion! So yes, I have to say anchor text is extremely powerful.
Part 2: Build Linking Consistency
Most people don’t realize that even though http://www.Wikipedia.com and http://Wikipedia.com lead to the same Wikipedia homepage, they are seen as two different links by Google. Let’s take it a step further. If you keep the “www” and lose the “http” you have another link that goes to the same place but is treated as unique by Google.
All that said; be as consistent as possible when requesting links. Find one format and stick to it. One hundred inbound links to the exact same URL is much better than 25 links each, using four different URLs that lead to the same place.
Part 3: PageRank Leads to Page Rank
Google’s PageRank algorithm can make or break your search engine optimization efforts and plays a big part in your eventual Webpage rankings. So PageRank and page rank? Here’s a tip to end the confusion. When you see the single word “PageRank” it is referring to a trademarked name that Google owns. PageRank is a unit of measure that Google developed, and uses to determine the value of a Webpage. When you see the words “page rank” we are merely talking about how a Webpage ranks, or is positioned on a search engine for a given keyword.
So how does it work? A page with a GPR of 6 is considered very important by Google, while a page with a GPR of 0 is not so much. If you get links from pages with high GPRs you will build your own PageRank. If you get links from pages with no GPR, they can still help you but do not lend any additional PageRank credibility.
Higher GPR leads to more credibility with Google and possibly becoming what they consider to be an “authority” which can double your top placements, literally. To see what I mean, search for “cats” on Google (without quotes.) The number 1 match is Wikipedia.com and references furry little felines. The number 2 match is also from Wikipedia but is about a Broadway musical.
So what? Notice how that second match is indented? That means it was not meant to be number 2 and might have actually been number 10 or 16 or more. But since Wikipedia.com is what Google considers an authority, it get’s little bumps like this. Pretty nice huh? And trust me, you don’t have to be Wikipedia to become an authority. Everything you need is in this article. I’ve done it many times.
There are different ways to see a page’s GPR. If you don’t already have it, visit Google and download their “Google Toolbar.” It will show you the GPR of any page on the Web.
Part 4: Use the Best Tools
Last but not least, SEO is like anything else, if you use the best tools for the job your results will be faster, better and longer lasting.
Back in the day, search engine optimization professionals and do it yourselfers had to do everything by hand. It took forever and one simple mistake could mean weeks of work down the drain. Today however, there are plenty of software tools to help get the job done in a faction of the time. Just find the BEST one for what you want to accomplish.
For our particular needs, were looking for an app than can help with linking and build our “authority” status and check ranking progress. Over the past six or so years I’ve used nearly a dozen pieces of software claiming to be the best. Some were pretty good. Others were a waste. The one I most often recommend to my SEO seminar students is SEO Elite (http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com) because it gets amazing results and is one of the most affordable options at $167.
Even if you’re not ready for a tool, you might want to check out the above link and go through some of the video tutorials. They show you how to find “authority” link partners, get special insights on anchor text and how to best spy on your competition.
That’s it for now. Good luck and keep at it!
Article Source: http://www.articlegoldmine.com
Michael Small is the founder of free SEO (search engine optimization) site SEOpartner.com and author of numerous search engine optimization books and whitepapers including the SEO Notebook.
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